Yossarian
Captain John Yossarian is the 28-year-old
protagonist of the
1961 novel
Catch-22 by
Joseph Heller. He is a part of the 256th squadron of the
Army Air Forces (which later became the
US Air Force), where he serves as a
B-25 bombardier. The character's exploits are based on the experiences of the author: Heller was a bombardier in the Air Corps stationed on an
island off the coast of
Italy during
World War II, and also lost crew members when his plane was attacked on his flight to bomb the city of
Avignon.
Yossarian is also the protagonist of
Catch-22's sequel,
Closing Time, which was published in
1994.
Although the book describes him as being
Assyrian, his name indicates an
Armenian background. In
Closing Time, he is revealed to be an Armenian jokingly posing as an Assyrian.
Yossarian's first name, John, is given quite late in the book version of
Catch-22, as a throwaway remark by Colonel Korn: "Call me Blackie, John. We're pals now." (pg. 491; Vintage Classics). The movie poster has Yossarian's dog tags listing his first name as "Aram," which is Armenian for John. Later in the novel, a doctor also calls him John. In
Closing Time, his first name is used frequently, as the novel has a civilian, rather than a military setting. In
Catch-22, however, Yossarian is very much detached from the predominant culture, a fact which is emphasised by his foreign name and "Assyrian" background, and the use of the exotic name Yossarian was chosen by Heller to emphasise his protagonist's detachment from the mainstream military culture. To highlight this, Yossarian's name is described by Cathcart as being "an odious, alien, distasteful name, that just did not inspire confidence. It was not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle." (pg. 241)
Moreover, Heller saw the Jewish community of American becoming more integrated and less sidelined by mainstream society, and so decided not to give his protagonist a Jewish name and a
Coney Island background (as Heller had), since it would not have had as strong an effect in 1961 as perhaps twenty years previously. As to the origins of the name itself, "Heller admitted in later years that the name 'Yossarian' was derived from the name of one of his Air Force buddies, Francis Yohannon, but that the character of Yossarian himself was 'the incarnation of a wish' (
Now and Then 175-6)."
[Scoggins, Michael C.: "Joseph Heller's Combat Experiences in Catch-22"; War, Literature and the Arts, vol. 15; pg. 223. United States Air Force Academy, 2003. (available here)]Throughout the book, Yossarian's main concern is the idea that people are trying to kill him, either directly (by attacking his plane) or indirectly (by forcing him to fly missions). His suspicion becomes full-blown
paranoia when he finds out that, because of Air Force red tape, he cannot leave. He is unable to fly the required number of missions to be discharged from duty because his superiors keep increasing the number of required missions. Additionally, he cannot obtain a
section 8 by pretending to be
insane because his superiors see his wanting to get out of flying as a sign of perfect
sanity (hence
Catch-22). Because of this, Yossarian
boycotts flying missions as much as possible, either through
feigning illness or inventing an excuse to return to base (like a busted radio.) In fact, the book begins with Yossarian staying in the hospital due to an invented
liver condition. He busies himself by censoring lettersand signing them
Washington Irving, Irving Washington, or (as gets the Chaplain into trouble with authorities) Albert T. Tappman (or R.O. Shipman in earlier editions), the Chaplain's name.
The dark humour of Yossarian's situation stems from the fact that Yossarian cannot get out of flying missions due to insanity, because Catch-22 stipulates that "a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind." (pg. 52) The only people who try to get out of flying missions are the sane ones: those who continue to fly are insane, and thus can be grounded, if only they ask. However, once they ask, this concern for their well-being immediately means they are sane, and must continue flying. The message found in Yossarian's response to this - ultimately his desertion and refusal to fly - is that war is something conducted on all levels,
General to
Private, by insane people, and "it was all a sensible young gentleman like himself could do to maintain his perspective amid so much madness." (pg. 23) The notion that a war is somehow different to that of thousands of individual murderous rampages is challenged by Yossarian's character, who reasons that people must be insane to take part in a war, since they are basically just government-sanctioned killing sprees and essential suicide, founded on such illogical causes as
patriotism.
Yossarian is also haunted by memories of the final moments of
Snowden, one of his crew. Snowden, hit by flak fire during a bombing run, was tended to by Yossarian. When Yossarian finished patching what he assumed was Snowden's only wound (severe yet not life-threatening) he realised that, in actuality, Snowden's stomach had been opened, and he had tended the wrong wound. However, in all likelihood, Snowden would have been killed by the unseen wound despite Yossarian's intervention. Snowden's death manifests Yossarian's desires to evade death in combat, as by seeing Snowden's entrails spilling over the plane, he learns that "Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage." (pg. 504) Ironically, he is described as preferring to die naturally than being killed in combat. It is a meaningless, premature death for someone else's cause which Yossarian fears.
The bulk of
Catch-22 concerns Yossarian's relationships with the other soldiers in his squadron, such as the
psychotic Hungry Joe, the amateur
war profiteer Milo Minderbinder, and the spoiled, idealistic
Nately. As a note, there are many characters that Yossarian hates and likes. His best friends seem to be:
Dunbar, the Chaplain,
McWatt,
Nately, and
Hungry Joe. There are two characters whom Yossarian argues with, but he appears to show sadness when one, Clevinger, dies and the other, Orr, deserts (he eventually paddles to Sweden). The book also concerns the efforts of Yossarian's superiors, especially the egomaniacal
Colonel Cathcart and the
Joe McCarthy-like careerist
Captain Black, to continually up the number of missions required before the aircrews can rotate back to the US, in an attempt to make themselves look good to their superiors.
Whenever on leave, Yossarian and his friends carouse, drink, and sleep around as much as they can, knowing and fearing they could die on any given mission. One of the
prostitutes they employ becomes Nately's unofficial girlfriend (she is referred to only as "
Nately's Whore" and "Nately's Girl"). Despite Nately's repeated advances, she spurns him cruelly until he, instead of sleeping with her, lets her get a good night's sleep. The next morning she began to show some signs of affection, which could possibly be construed as love. When Nately is killed, she blames Yossarian for his death; she manifests a towering rage and tries to kill Yossarian several times during the remainder of the narrative.
By end of the book, just about every other member of his squadron has been killed, disappeared, gone AWOL or otherwise removed. Through a convoluted chain of events, Yossarian earns Cathcart's ire for a
smuggling scam that was actually perpetrated by Milo and is threatened with imprisonment. When Yossarian threatens Cathcart with exposing his opportunistic manipulation of missions, however, Cathcart backs down and offers to release him from duty as a reward for not telling anybody, as well as praising Cathcart and Korn on his return to the States. Yossarian cannot betray the members of his squadron who are still on the island, nor those that have died as a result of Cathcart's despicable self-serving missions policy, so decides that he will run for freedom. The book is left with Yossarian running through the camp, a plan to make for Sweden in his head. There is nothing for the reader to know whether Yossarian makes it. However,
Closing Time hints that the idealistic escape did not really eventuate, with Yossarian saying that when he went home, he was made a major. While Korn and Cathcart are not mentioned, there are implications that perhaps Yossarian took their deal in the end. This reflects more the character of the elderly Yossarian, who by his eighties has become a part of the society he spurned in his youth.
